1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to light therapy. In particular, the present invention relates to systems and methods for dynamically distributing power of a light beam for use in administering light therapy.
2. Background and Related Art
High-powered lasers generally emit collimated, coherent light that has been used to cut and/or burn away tissue, such as in surgical techniques. More recently, low-powered light sources that do not sever or destroy tissue have been used with the intention to provide an effect on a variety of metabolic processes. For example, the low-powered light sources are used in pain and chronic pain management, sports medicine, dermatology, rheumatology and dentistry.
While low powered light sources emit photons that may be used to interact with biological molecules to provide photochemical reactions and/or biologic effects, only the photons that are actually absorbed provide photochemical reactions. X-rays, gamma rays and other absorbed high-energy photons affect human tissues by relatively indiscriminate ionization of molecules.
With the use of current low powered light source techniques, it is difficult to expose more than the first few layers of human skin or tissue to visible and ultraviolet radiation since pigments and other molecules located in the surface layers of the skin absorb the majority of visible and ultraviolet radiation. Accordingly, applying visible and ultraviolet radiation to the skin may have little or no effect on target molecules in lower layers that could become stimulated if exposed to those wavelengths of radiation. And, while higher powered radiation sources can deliver greater energy to deeper layers, it is undesirable to expose tissue to such large amounts of ultraviolet radiation due to the adverse effects of such concentrated radiation.
Thus, while techniques currently exist that are used to provide light therapy, challenges still exist. Accordingly, it would be an improvement in the art to augment or even replace current techniques with other techniques.